Even Dwarfs Started Small

Sonny’s missing

Feel for the little kid skaters whose skill outpaces their form and frames, the preternaturally gifted Nyjah Huston or Chaz Ortiz types launching careers before cracking the 60-inch height threshold, tricks obscured by billowing T-shirts and short statures. Even prodigies who grew into powers like Nick Jensen and Grant Taylor needed time to fully develop and inhabit their skating; Guy Mariano may be the exception proving the rule that no little kid part has been deemed a classic.

With all this half-baked philosophizing in mind comes Yaje Popson’s section in the much-ballyhooed “Rich Mahogany” video (holder of the title for best internet promo of the year), which forces a reckoning with the whole hate-the-first-five-years-and-then-ask-questions approach to little kid skaters. Now I got this New York-centric vid a couple months ago, partly because of that promo and partly because Billy Rohan and Lurker Lou were in it, but there I’d be, letting Yaje Popson’s opening part play through, the usual little-kid grumbles fading away like so many unreturned library books and Slap messageboard passwords.

One major advantage this kid has is his backside lipslides, which he can seemingly screech across most any available surface. Another is an innate ability to break down old person defenses. Let us discuss an example. At one point in this video part he’s doing this line down a street and he whips out the fakie frontside noseslide shove-it, a classic mid-to-late-90s ledge trick that’s gotten all bogged down these days with fakie flips and bigspins and reality TV and shit. It’s the sorta trick one may see somebody do at a spot or a park and convey the impression that the person doing it probably had been skating a while. Yaje Popson has a lot of these type of moves, or else something about the way he does a trick like the switch backside bigspin that made me think about Rick Howard in “Questionable” instead of whoever’s doing them these days (Darrell Stanton?). Or this frontside feeble grind he does on a beefy ledge, which is awesome in all of the standard ways. And, he nollie 180’s into that courthouse bank drop, which is just ridiculous.

Of course at this point Yaje Popson’s already past the little-kid red zone, because at 17 or whatever he’s shed most of that dumpy short-stack style that some dudes unfortunately never overcome, no matter how tight their clothing gets. There’s a kind of feature on him here, but the best idea is probably to get the Green Diamond video and watch that because it’s also got loads of beards and Vans and Kyle Iles does the sickest switch noseblunt slide. There is also a Soulja Boy song and the “Bossy” instrumental. You can buy it from Unicron probably, I can’t find Quartersnacks’s ordering page anymore.

Hey, Leo Romero Also Is Back On His Bullshit

Shoot the gun

So this RVCA promo: basically it’s what you would expect, a load of longhairs in tight pants and red shoes, banks, jangly guitars, 5-0s and so on. It’s kind of less interesting as a concept than the company itself, as what with rappers wearing RVCA hats (possibly in the XXL with Rick Ross) which made me wonder if RVCA is maybe far deeper in terms of, you know, cultural reach than previously suspected. Regardless Nestor Judkins has some really great tricks here, if that’s him hopping up on the backside lipslide and jumping the handrail into the bank.

That is til 3 minutes in when the stage clears for Leo Romero to unleash the great Baker footage firehose, or at least the stuff that’s not worth saving for the Emerica vid, logo boards be damned. The fakie frontside blunt opener was a good one I thought, back to the “That’s Life” part where he’d occasionally throw in random difficult ledge tricks in between gliding down gaps. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen any footage in a while but in this promo Leo Romero seems like he’s skating faster and angrier and at times (such as the humpty-hump to backside 180 and the tight-spot kickflips), seemingly for the sheer “fuck” of it, which is kind of a tough thing to communicate in an age awash with so much urban creativity. This is a good section, not great unless you look at it in terms of what he’s still sitting on, namely all the uphill handrail battles which are apparently contesting Heath’s white period for “Stay Gold” bragging rights. Not sure how rare this vid is supposed to be, but worth the free admission for the long slides, flashy frontside flip and artfully selected slams — which work pretty well, following the landed tricks toward the end of the part.